Small Businesses to Receive $15m in Grants in Williamson County

• Author: Monica Jackson
• Posted: 2024-11-03

Williamson County, located in Texas, is doing what it can to spur on the local economy there by offering $15 million in small business grants to qualified businesses. While a lot of people may hear this news that broke on Thursday morning, May 21, and assume this took a long time to actually do something for businesses in the area, the fact is that Williamson County is acting very quickly, as their Wilco Forward grant program was only started on May 6, just two weeks ago. Already, the small government there has allocated and came up with the funds to disperse and are ready to start handing grants out.

In fact, checks are already in the mail, with 1,287 businesses receiving them. While this seems like a whole lot of businesses, it's unfortunately only a fraction of small businesses in the area. If only those 1,300 businesses were receiving the total budget of the grants, it would be a huge win, as that would be no small sum of money. $15 million over nearly 1,300 businesses equates to over $11,000 per business. That's a hefty sum of money that can help pay mortgages, insurance, employees, and other overhead costs, thus keeping over a thousand businesses in operation, hypothetically. Though the bad news here is that these businesses won't actually be getting this much.

The grant program is accepting applications through June 30, so a few more thousand businesses will end up sharing the grant money. While Williamson County is keeping tight lipped on the exact amount businesses are getting, the typical average for these sorts of small business relief grants during the virus pandemic has been a little less than $2,000 in total. Though this would mean that five-times as many businesses could receive some financial help from this grant package, if that's the case. Though $2,000 is a far cry from $11,000.

Williamson County is taking this opportunity to give itself some good publicity, speaking about how their leaders came together in a time of crisis to get something done. Politicians are bragging about how they didn't twiddle their thumbs and took decisive action, likely because many are in an election year.

Though before people start viewing this as an example of competent government that had $15 million set aside because of good fiscal practices, it's important to note that this money was given to Williamson by the federal government, who gave the county $93 million in the CARES Act, so this information is actually causing a lot of people to ask what happened to the other $78 million. Unfortunately, government is so rife with corruption and people pocking taxpayer money, particularly in emergency situations, that there aren't enough news outlets in the nation to keep up with it all. Though for right now, everything seems on the up and up here with these small business grants, and there's no reason to suspect anything untoward is happening.

Though the fact that local politicians are so willing to exercise self-aggrandizement when all they did was pass federal money out really goes to show the state of America's politics, even on a local level that Americans otherwise believe are more trustworthy and humble. Giving the grant money out so quickly is a good thing, though taking credit for federal money to hand out may appear to some as really bad optics.

Local Governments Helping Economies

If one isn't necessarily educated on civics that well, they might believe that it's the federal governmen's responsibility to help smaller, local areas like Williamson County during this time. This is especially true if one watches mainstream media. Whether it's Hurricane Katrina suddenly being the federal government's responsibility instead of Louisiana's, or Flint's water crisis being a Trump problem and not a Michigan one, too many local governments drop the ball and then rely on the federal government to clean up the mess.

Local governments are supposed to be there for their residents. They'e supposed to practice solid financial methods to save money on budgets precisely for situations like these. Frankly, most of them do not. The politicians, from mayors to councilmembers, all seem to make good salaries and drive nice cars. Though when a bill comes due, they look to America's taxpayers in general to foot the bill, because the've squandered all their reserves.

Instances like the pandemic highlight yet again how the federal government has to bail out mismanaged counties, and how those counties still take the credit for receiving other people's money as a gift.